More Thoughts on Stealth Rock

Do you support the testing of a Stealth Rockless metagame?


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"If it aint broke, don't fix it". There is no logical reason to believe that an SR-less metagame would be better, more playable, or more diverse, and there has also been no evidence that would suggest this either. A ban on Stealth Rock is just as arbitrary and unfounded as a ban on weather effects from OU.
This is exactly the type of mentality that I hate. This statement indicates to me that you want to avoid change that you think is unnecessary. There's nothing wrong with that thinking, but when necessary changes have been made, what else is there to do?

You see, I do not want to "settle" on a metagame that I like. I would rather keep looking for better ones. When the problems/suspects are taken care of, I would like to see if improvements can be made, not consider everything "fixed" and leave it alone.

If that's not what you want, jrrrrrrr, then we just have to agree to disagree on that.
I think that "it's not deserving of a ban" is a pretty legitimate reason to not test something. The simple fact is that there is nothing that would indicate that an SR-less metagame would be good, and I actually think that an SR-less game would be worse. Since it has existed since the start of d/p, the burden of brokenness/reasons to test fall on those who want a test.
This is where I agree with Jumpman:
every time i read any revamp/analysis it says "with SR support" and "provided you have SR down" like at least twice and well if that isnt an indication that our metagame literally and figuratively revolves around this broken move then i dont know what is. weigh in here again guys...when should we considered testing this, if we dont agree that sr falls under my definition of suspect:

Any Pokémon, move or clause that respectively may benefit competitive standard or uber battle if moved or implemented elsewhere.
There's no question to me that our metagame revolves around Stealth Rock. This is part of the reason why I would be interested in seeing the results of a Stealth Rock test.
 

Jumpman16

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Lastly, I'd like to refer to the Attacking Types in October. Fire, Ice, and Rock type moves are first, second, and third, respectively, in terms of hitting the metagame, which brings forth two interesting questions. First of all if fire and ice moves hit the metagame so well, why aren't there more fire and ice types in OU to take advantage of this?
maybe because stealth rock is making them all 25 or 50% less viable than they would be if there weren't stealth rock. Zapdos/Gyarados/Salamence/Skymin would all be at least a little better without SR, the fact that they can cope with it is a testament to how good they are in their own right, anyone can tell you that

Second, why does Rock-type moves come in at the third highest if 'the metagame revolved around stealth rock?' If the metagame was so centered around a weakness to rock, shouldn't rock-type moves be more around the bottom half of the chart instead of being third?

the pokemon that aren't weak to rock, like steel and ground types, are weak to the more popular fire and ice which actually includes the most popular fighting type (only other type that resists rock) in lucario. this means that more popular offensive measures than rock are being used to deal with the pokemon that are resistant to SR. that said i think there isn't that much of a correlation between weakness to stealth rock and how much average damage rock as an offensive type does
 
This is exactly the type of mentality that I hate. This statement indicates to me that you want to avoid change that you think is unnecessary. There's nothing wrong with that thinking, but when necessary changes have been made, what else is there to do?

You see, I do not want to "settle" on a metagame that I like. I would rather keep looking for better ones. When the problems/suspects are taken care of, I would like to see if improvements can be made, not consider everything "fixed" and leave it alone.
What is a good metagame on an objective basis? No one is ever going to be completely satisfied regardless of what it is - I personally view the Platinum metagame as far worse than the D/P one, but I'm not going to bitch about it for obvious reasons. To run around tampering with the game in the hopes that somehow things will be better frankly opens up anything up for testing in the name of "improving the metagame", and that is something I sure as hell don't want. Frankly, why not test Trick, as Obi pointed out? It irritates me far more than SR ever has, really, as it's much harder to work around than SR.

There's no question to me that our metagame revolves around Stealth Rock. This is part of the reason why I would be interested in seeing the results of a Stealth Rock test.
The metagame no more revolves around SR than it does around Earthquake. SR is good? Yes, extremely. Is it a important factor in making teams? Yes. Does that mean broken. Hell no.

maybe because stealth rock is making them all 25 or 50% less viable than they would be if there weren't stealth rock. Zapdos/Gyarados/Salamence/Skymin would all be at least a little better without SR, the fact that they can cope with it is a testament to how good they are in their own right, anyone can tell you that
Wait, you want Gyara/Zappy, etc. to be even more powerful than they currently are? Please tell me that is a joke.
 
In my opinion (not that it counts much) SR is broken.
Have you ever seen a team with say, Yanmega AND Charizard on it - NO because both are weak to a certain move.
It also stops particular strategies from working (Focus Sashers etc...)
Thus if I had a hail team (which is generally weak to stealth rock -due to ice type) and my opponent set's down stealth rock - it swings the odds towards him all in one turn. This wouldnt be too bad with a case where the opponent makes a very good move and you lose because of it but SR takes little to no skill to set up.
 
In my opinion (not that it counts much) SR is broken.
Have you ever seen a team with say, Yanmega AND Charizard on it - NO because both are weak to a certain move.
It also stops particular strategies from working (Focus Sashers etc...)
Thus if I had a hail team (which is generally weak to stealth rock -due to ice type) and my opponent set's down stealth rock - it swings the odds towards him all in one turn. This wouldnt be too bad with a case where the opponent makes a very good move and you lose because of it but SR takes little to no skill to set up.
If you get rocked by SR that's bad team building. It's like putting Raikou and Jirachi on a team and complaining that you got destroyed by EQ. Yes, SR is present. A very large part of the metagame is realizing it's there and dealing with it.

As for Focus Sash and Hail teams and such, if you want to run them you need to put thought into it. I for one am glad you can't just make a team of six sweepers and put a Focus Sash on each one. If you want to run Hail or a Focus Sash use a Rapid Spinner.

Not all strategies are going to be equal. That's how these games work. There will always be something that is present everywhere. In this case it's SR. Just because it's a defining feature in the metagame doesn't make it broken. It makes it important.
 
In my opinion (not that it counts much) SR is broken.
Have you ever seen a team with say, Yanmega AND Charizard on it - NO because both are weak to a certain move.
.
Have you ever seen a team with Charizard and Magmortar - no because both are weak to surf. Let's ban surf.

It also stops particular strategies from working (Focus Sashers etc...)
Thus if I had a hail team (which is generally weak to stealth rock -due to ice type) and my opponent set's down stealth rock - it swings the odds towards him all in one turn. This wouldnt be too bad with a case where the opponent makes a very good move and you lose because of it but SR takes little to no skill to set up.
Move stops strategy a from working, so move is banned. Oh boy, is our little banlist going to grow.
 
To run around tampering with the game in the hopes that somehow things will be better frankly opens up anything up for testing in the name of "improving the metagame", and that is something I sure as hell don't want.
Why not? You don't want to strive for continuous improvement? You also want to "settle" on a metagame?

Okay. I won't be able to change your mind on that, it seems, so I won't even try. It's differences in thought such as this that make competitive decisions more difficult to make, but we'll have to work around them somehow.
Frankly, why not test Trick, as Obi pointed out? It irritates me far more than SR ever has, really, as it's much harder to work around than SR.
If there is time to test it, why not? Obi's post was meant to be satirical (Chris is me's words, not mine), but there have been some complaints about it, from what I hear. Hey, we'll have nothing better to do, right?
 
And making Lugia harder to take down is far from a good thing, especially as far as OU is concerned.
I was just referring to the fact Rayquaza also is less powerfull because it can't use SR support to help its sweep

Really? Many sweepers rely on SR to get those vital O/2HKOs. Many analyses make a point of this, taking SR damage into account for the damage calcs. And that extra damage is especially important for knocking big hitters like Zapdos, Gyarados, and Salamence in line, keeping them from switching in and out at will.
Those calculations is and will always remain in theory. Most of these sweepers like Lucario, Scizor whatever only appear in the lategame when the team already suffered a great deal of damage.

Zapdos can roost away SR damage yes SR ban will increase it's defensive potential but not in a ridiculous way.
Gyarados and Salamence are both pokemon who set themselfs up with DD mostly after they have come in the first time they won't do it again.
 

Jumpman16

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Wait, you want Gyara/Zappy, etc. to be even more powerful than they currently are? Please tell me that is a joke.
i want the most competitive standard game possible, and if there is a move that may benefit standard play implemented elsewhere, it may be worth testing its removal. besides, gyara and skymin and co, as has been stated many times in this thread and in my pr thread, rely on SR for many of their kills.

ask darkness malice whether blissey gives a shit about skymin if she doesn't have to switch into SR (this means that skymin has to flinch blissey twice naked instead of once in order for skymin to kill blissey). blissey still doesn't care about zapdos either way. 252Atk LO DDed Gyarados will only OHKO 252HP/252Def Zapdos 29.54% of the time without SR support (accounting for both flinches and misses) instead of 80% of the time. bronzong is now not 2HKOed by Sala's DD LO Outrage. there are two sides to the SR coin, and I have considered both of them, which is why I'm not so quick to take sides without seeing evidence first.
 

Jumpman16

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Have you ever seen a team with Charizard and Magmortar - no because both are weak to surf. Let's ban surf.
this analogy fails when you fail to acknowledge that, in essence, "Surf" is being used every single turn Charizard and Magmortar and any other pokemon are switched in, in addition to whatever actual move an opposing pokemon uses. i wish people would stop with these strawmen
 
I think this topic has raised an interesting question, what exactly do we want out of standards? Less bans? Largest number of usable pokemon? Most "fun"?

We've discussed this in the past but I don't think very much came out of it. Personally, I think that the "standard" metagame should strive to be as close to the raw game as possible while still being balanced meaning that it should try to ban as little as possible. Now, if people want to play an "optimal" metagame with the largest number of viable pokemon, then that's great, I just don't think it should be the "standard".

Any time you add or remove things from a game, you change it a little bit. If you do this enough, it's no longer the same game, but a similar derived game. For example, it doesn't take very many rule changes to turn Klondike solitaire into free cell. Although they are still both types of solitaire (and both types of "card games"), they can no longer be considered the same game. Now, a lot of people consider free cell to be a superior game because, unlike Klondike, it can never be unwinnable due to luck. Yet people still play Klondike and in fact, it's considered by many to be the "standard" solitaire despite the many ways to change it into other more "balanced" types.

So suppose (hypothetically) we find the D/P metagame is more balanced than the D/P/P one, should we ban everything introduced in platinum from the standard metagame just because it's "better"? No, because then we're not playing the same game anymore.

Quite frankly, searching for this "perfect" metagame is impractical and will result in our testing going on untill the next generation of pokemon games comes out. I'm all for progress and improvement, I'm just not convinced that it's the main purpose of the standard metagame.
 
You can stay true to the game's basic mechanics while improving the competitive environment.

Apparently we all disagree on exactly where the balance between the two lies.
 

Jumpman16

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how much do you/we actually care nowadays how "true" we are to the game itself then?
what kind of question is that, everything that i have personally done and tried to do for competitive pokemon has been in the interests of making the game better. i can't speak for "we", but don't you think it says something that i care so much abuot this "even though i dont play"?
 
how much do you/we actually care nowadays how "true" we are to the game itself then?
If by this you mean changing game mechanics, then it is not going to happen. We may use the game with everything Nintendo gives us, but we choose here to make the competitive environment that best suits what we as a community want by banning things.
 
maybe because stealth rock is making them all 25 or 50% less viable than they would be if there weren't stealth rock. Zapdos/Gyarados/Salamence/Skymin would all be at least a little better without SR, the fact that they can cope with it is a testament to how good they are in their own right, anyone can tell you that
Then, is the fact those Fire/Ice/Flying types cannot cope with SR a testament to how mediocre they are?

the pokemon that aren't weak to rock, like steel and ground types, are weak to the more popular fire and ice which actually includes the most popular fighting type (only other type that resists rock) in lucario. this means that more popular offensive measures than rock are being used to deal with the pokemon that are resistant to SR. that said i think there isn't that much of a correlation between weakness to stealth rock and how much average damage rock as an offensive type does
You do have a point. However, I'm more concerned with resistances to rock than weaknesses to rock. If Stealth Rock is in fact an overpowered or an overly dominant move, you would expect to see more rock-resistant pokemon in OU. The fact that Rock types is so high up there as an attacking move means that a resistance to Stealth Rock alone isn't enough to influence the tiering of any pokemon. And like you said earlier, Zapdos/Skymin/Mence/Gyarados are pokemon good enough to cope with Stealth Rock, so we can see that a weakness to stealth rock also doesn't do much to influence a powerful pokemon's usage. So what are we left with? A weakness to Stealth Rock can negatively influence the usage of the not-so-powerful pokemon. Now, are the peoples' collective desires to use not-so-powerful pokemon that cannot be viable in an environment with Stealth Rock enough to warrant a ban on Stealth Rock?
 

Darkmalice

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Here's a question. What is more worthy of a suspect test than SR?

I know Lati@s is up after Skymin, and Lati@s are allowed in Battle Tower. But what afterwards?

Manaphy will undoubtly create a dominate rain-based metagame, which I consider very harmful to the metagame. I don't believe enough has changed to make Garchomp OU; very few things have popped up to counter Yache Garchomp, the only viable new counter I know of is Jump's Trick Cresselia. OHKO moves will harm the metagame by making it much more luck based. Ho-oh, if you believe it should be tested, is far from OU without SR, so I rather test SR before Ho-oh, as well as all the above. If we don't have anything better to test than SR, let's test SR.
 
That's what i've been wondering too, because it seems obvious that SR will be tested at some point making this thread sort of irrelevant.

But there are many, many things more pressing than SR, like Lati@s, Manaphy, UU, etc etc.
 

Jumpman16

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Then, is the fact those Fire/Ice/Flying types cannot cope with SR a testament to how mediocre they are?
oh, i dont know, maybe thats largely the point of a test?
You do have a point. However, I'm more concerned with resistances to rock than weaknesses to rock. If Stealth Rock is in fact an overpowered or an overly dominant move, you would expect to see more rock-resistant pokemon in OU. The fact that Rock types is so high up there as an attacking move means that a resistance to Stealth Rock alone isn't enough to influence the tiering of any pokemon. And like you said earlier, Zapdos/Skymin/Mence/Gyarados are pokemon good enough to cope with Stealth Rock, so we can see that a weakness to stealth rock also doesn't do much to influence a powerful pokemon's usage. So what are we left with? A weakness to Stealth Rock can negatively influence the usage of the not-so-powerful pokemon. Now, are the peoples' collective desires to use not-so-powerful pokemon that cannot be viable in an environment with Stealth Rock enough to warrant a ban on Stealth Rock?
a ban on stealth rock? oh, i dont know, maybe thats largely the point of a test?
 
I think its sad that people ban what they can't beat.Why don't we ban everything but magikarp and tackle wait tackle is uber nvm splash and lets SEE the metagame.I didn't even support the garchomp ban tbh.
Just because something is beatable doesn't mean that it is not broken. For example Rayquaza is quite beatable, but its obviously Uber.

SR teams are beatable, but its more than annoying when they do the same redundant techinques with high success. There are ways to get around Stealth Rock, but there are even more ways of getting SR back on the field and something like Bronzong which is excellent at setting up SR is not going to die so easily.
 
Just to add my own two cents here... (or maybe it's only worth one? less?) for the sake of discussion.
If you're able to predict, shouldn't you be able to figure out that the opponent want to set up Stealth Rock if you've spun it away? For example, you have an offensive team on which, say, a Tentacruel has blown away the Stealth Rock that your opponent has set up. He switches in Bronzong to set them back up. You spin them away again. Next time, you can send in a Pokémon who can viably threaten Bronzong in one turn immediately after inconspicuously Rapid Spinning (tell me if I need to elaborate on that point), so they either sacrifice Bronzong to set up Stealth Rock, or they don't get to set up Stealth Rock at all. If you're running a stall team (by the way, have those declined ever so slightly since Platinum, or is it just me?), then you probably shouldn't have much worry with Stealth Rock, anyway, as off the top of my head, it seems like many bulky Pokémon aren't weak to Rock (yes, I've heard of Articuno). Perhaps that's because Rock is such an effective attacking type?

As you can see, I'm all for keeping Stealth Rock in the game, regardless of whether or not we test it.

And as I said, my own two cents. Disregard it as you like.

Ah, and apologies if this has already been stated before. If it has, just ignore I ever said this.
 

Darkmalice

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No one has still said why we should test something else instead of SR. Nothing is more worthy of a test than SR (besides Lati@s, which is being tested immediately after Skymin). This whole discussion proved it, as we have a large discussion as about if SR should be tested next, and no one has proven why something else is more worthy of a test than SR.
 
what kind of question is that, everything that i have personally done and tried to do for competitive pokemon has been in the interests of making the game better. i can't speak for "we", but don't you think it says something that i care so much abuot this "even though i dont play"?
ok but we're apparently against just going in and changing game mechanics, so I want to know where the line between that and banning things we are merely "better off without" is, and why.


darknessmalice said:
No one has still said why we should test something else instead of SR. Nothing is more worthy of a test than SR (besides Lati@s, which is being tested immediately after Skymin). This whole discussion proved it, as we have a large discussion as about if SR should be tested next, and no one has proven why something else is more worthy of a test than SR.
CardsOfTheHeart, this is why I don't approve of a Stealth Rock test. I would approve of a Stealth Rock test after I was sure all of the more important tests were out of the way first, which means that I'd probably approve... after all of the more important tests were out of the way first.

Everything that we have yet to test that is currently banned is more worthy of a test than Stealth Rock is, especially all of the current Suspects.
 
I would approve of a Stealth Rock test after I was sure all of the more important tests were out of the way first, which means that I'd probably approve... after all of the more important tests were out of the way first.
I agree 100%.

Do you agree that it is at least worth adding to the Order of Operations, then? Even at the very end?

You don't want to test Stealth Rock EVER according to your vote, yet you would approve a Stealth Rock test after everything else is out of the way? Please don't contradict yourself. Which is it?
 
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